Wright&Grainger play Latitude Festival ahead of heroic Fringe return
With a slew of award-winning albums and more than a thousand performances world wide, Wright&Grainger are already well on the way to being music legends in their own life times.
This weekend they will be playing the Latitude Festival in advance of bringing the stories of two of ancient Greece's most iconic legends to life in new Fringe production HALF MAN || HALF BULL at Summerhall this August.
Playing their HALF MAN || HALF BULL album live for the first time as two performances each night, Wright&Grainger along with Oliver Tilney reimagine both the adrenaline fuelled Theseus & The Minotaur and the heartrending Daedalus & Icarus.
Two stories, two gigs - two tales of escaping things and proving things. This is an epic theatrical night of story-telling in the style of Homer just updated for the modern era, full of virtuosic spoken word and soaring live music in the same style as their previous hit productions ORPHEUS, HELIOS, and THE GODS, THE GODS, THE GODS.
"Okay, here’s the thing," saysAlexander Wright of Wright&Grainger, "Oliver Tilney is one of our best pals and-long time collaborators. He called us wanting to scratch an itch - something in the stories of Theseus & The Minotaur and Daedalus & Icarus had got under his skin. It was a great idea. So, during lockdown, we wrote a double album and sent it out to 2,000 people as an at home listening experience."
Now that lock-down home listening experience has spread across the world and blossomed. Phil Grainger, the other half of the duo, says: "We made 2 albums. When we were in the studio, digging into the beautiful details of the beats and melodies and synths and sounds, we didn’t dare let ourselves imagine a live show.’
The pair are delighted that HALF MAN || HALF BULLis making its world premiere in The Dissection Room at Summerhall. Two interlinking stories about men trying to become master of animals told in the heart of an old veterinary college.
Oliver Tilney chips in: "It’s the perfect spot. Al & Phil have an amazing ability to reimagine these ancient stories for a modern day. We’ve made 2 halves of an epic story - you can watch them together or separately - which really resonate with our modern world.
"At the heart of it, they’re stories about wanting to prove yourself, about failure, about getting stuck in shame and, ultimately, about hope and the possibility we find in connection with other people.’
HALF MAN || HALF BULL will run at Summerhall Dissection Room, Part One - Theseus at 18.40 and Part Two - Daedalus at 19.50 from August 1 to 26 (except 12 & 19), 12+
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